


My Parents Do Not Care For It

by rubymatilda



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29424699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubymatilda/pseuds/rubymatilda
Summary: To be an indulgent collection of Sniper musings. No beta, we die
Relationships: Administrator & Saxton Hale, Demoman/Soldier (Team Fortress 2), Pyro & Sniper (Team Fortress 2), Scout & Sniper (Team Fortress 2), Scout & Spy (Team Fortress 2), Sniper/Spy (Team Fortress 2)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 18





	1. Snipin's a good job, mate

Snipin’s a good job, mate. But I’ll be honest with you–you see a lot. You see things that’ll make you laugh, things that’ll make you cry, things that’ll make you feel things you didn’t know you could. It’s like a bloody picture show, but free. And sometimes, you see things through the scope you wish you could forget.  
Most of the time it’s fairly domestic. For instance, over by the choke point, we can observe the Engineer in his natural habitat–from the relative safety of our own nest. Look at him go!  
Or keep an eye out–you might see our own Spy. Sniper grinned. Sure he was a professional, but he spent so much time watching out for the other Spy, he could surely be forgiven a moment of thought for his own.  
A cryptid, you might say. What do we really know about him? Tall, handsome, mysterious, way too classy for someone like our Mundy. Ruthlessly efficient, practical, unshakeable poker face. He got the job done for sure. Sniper admired that about him: you knew he cared about the same things Sniper cared about. You know. Professionalism, and standards. You might say they shared the same philosophy of life.  
Spy wasn’t quite as slick as he thought, though. Sniper knew something about him. Sniper knew that he cared.  
Sniper shook out of the daydream and focused on the battle. Damn good thing he was away from the action, and that–oops. No wonder he hadn’t been backstabbed. Rest in Pieces, Mr. Conagher.  
Now it looked like they were pushing in. Sniper idly followed the Medic's head with his crosshair. He was ducking around and hiding behind the Heavy too much to be sure of a shot. He could feel them getting ready to push through the choke, though, and the Medic would have to follow. A little patience.  
There was a relatively still moment. Both teams pulled back, just a bit. Sniper noticed Scout run out of the fray and slip into the momentarily unguarded flank route. Good. Sniper realized that he was holding his breath and forced it out. It was too quiet.  
The dam broke, and everything happened at once. The unguarded sentry went down of a few pipes and a sticky, the soldiers screamed and turned each other into colored rain in no-man's-land. The enemy sniper, camping out who knows where, hit medic–sounded like he was hurt bad. A sense more spiritual than tangible turned Sniper around to face the enemy Spy, who was not nearly as pretty as his own. Sniper shot him in the knee and reached for a jar, but by that point the spook had dived half-invisible out the window.  
When Sniper turned his attention back to the choke point, the enemy Medic had activated his Übercharge.  
Piss.  
He took a few potshots, but in all the chaos he couldn’t focus on anyone. Heavy and Medic retreated around the corner. Pyro charged the enemy team–ooh. Oof. Sniper dropped the burning Demoman, and watched in painful slow motion as his own Demo had a little accident with his own stickies. He loaded another round, checked his back–no stab wounds at the moment–and saw Spy there on the point.  
Spy was dodging a barrage of rockets and firing his revolver to little effect, and his face wore a look of abject terror. Despair was evident in his eyes, and . . . guilt? Sniper followed his gaze and saw Scout burning, retreating from the flank with the enemy Pyro hot on his heels, right into the fading Über. He was going to die, and suddenly, the look on Spy’s face made sense.  
Sniper noticed a few things, in this order. First, he saw a look of relief wash over Spy’s face as he covered Scout’s retreat, and so, Sniper knew that he cared. Second, Sniper realized that the Heavy and Medic had been headshot, presumably by him. Usually he had a plan, and stuck to it. But every once in a while, the universe just lined itself up, and his body made the rifle an extension of itself, and he blew someone’s fool head off before he even realized what he was doing. This was one of those times.  
Scout had escaped. Spy was taking some heat and went invisible. Heavy and Medic came back around the corner, and Sniper smiled, because he knew a thing about Spy.  
The third thing Sniper noticed was the blue dot on the wall behind him. He ducked, a hair too late.


	2. It's because I'm not... actually...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sniper Is Not Cis. If you don't like that, you may as well skip this one.  
> In accordance with the convention established by GaudyAficionado, Pyro uses they/he pronouns. https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaudyAficionado

Sniper woke up in respawn, again, with the usual headache, and the usual fuzzy memory of what had gotten him there. The headache was worse when he had been killed by . . . himself? As he had been this time.  
Sniper did not enjoy the respawn process, and he imagined the others felt about the same. Nobody ever talked about it off the job, and on the job they were all too busy–namely with the business of sending each other through respawn. Some days Sniper managed to avoid it altogether. Some days, if he had to summarize the experience in one sentence: “Wow! I’m so good at this job! And now I’m dead.”  
Though Mundy’s memory was hazy, he felt vaguely but strongly that this trip through respawn had been absolutely worth it. He peeked out the shutter door. There were two Engineers now, each with a sentry in place: the status quo stalemate seemed to have reinstated itself. Sniper was not in the mood either to face the chaos of battle up close or to go through respawn again today, if he could help it, so he decided on a spot further away from the action. It wasn’t the ideal spot in terms of escape routes and there were better sightlines a bit closer, but it was the farthest he could go from the front line and still contribute to the battle. Sniper grabbed a backpack and reorganized the sparse contents of his locker.  
He dawdled in respawn for longer than he thought he did. Spy blinked jarringly into existence, and just as abruptly let loose a vicious, vulgar fourteen-component stream-of-consciousness tirade in his native tongue. Sniper recognized “merde” and maybe “sacre.” He had no idea what Spy had said, but it must have been absolutely filthy.  
Spy glared at Sniper, as if to say “what are you looking at,” and Sniper realized he was staring. He panicked and his mind went completely blank. Without meaning to, he spoke, if you define speaking very loosely:  
“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . .”  
Spy’s expression went from defensive to something in between confused, concerned, and creeped out. “Bushman?”  
The words left Mundy’s face hole without much in the way of authorization on his part. “Uhhh . . . ya seemed a mite shook up there, mate. Want a drink?”  
He held out a bottle. The handsome Frenchman stared at him with an implacable expression for a moment before answering.  
“Non, merci. Not on the job.”  
They stared at each other awkwardly for a good ten seconds before Spy cleared his throat. “Well. Thank you for the offer. I must be going.”  
Sniper looked at the bottle in his hand. He had offered Spy a bottle of Demo’s scrumpy. “Yeah, sure, mate. See you around.” The Spy was already out the door and invisible by the time Sniper had finished the sentence. I don’t blame him, Mundy thought. If I could disappear right now I would.  
He sighed and made his solitary way to the little shack where he would make his nest for the next few hours. It had been a shed. It was small and low to the ground, and it had one window and one door. There were some barrels and crates that he could push around to barricade the door. It was cramped and dim, and it was exactly what Sniper needed right now. He dropped his backpack on the floor and got to work.  
Sniper peered through the scope and almost immediately noticed a soldier and medic overextended, out in the open with foreheads on them like coffee tables. He almost felt bad about it, for the sake of his own standards. It hardly felt worth it. But he shot the medic anyways, and the soldier ran face first into his own rocket, courtesy of Pyro’s airblast. He checked behind him and returned his gaze to the battle. He missed a headshot on a soldier that was absolutely not worth the time he had spent waiting for him to peek around the corner. A minute later, he shot the medic again, and their heavy started trying to harass him from range. Unfortunately for him, that meant he walked into the range of a sentry. Sniper figured that they knew about where he was now and he ought to go ahead and block the door.  
He leaned his rifle up next to the window. The barrels were full of gravel, and he could not budge them. He sighed and slumped against them. The crates, on the other hand, appeared to be empty. This presented both a solution and a new problem, in that they would not hold the door for long against a determined enemy. Ah, well: at least they would be an obstacle and give him warning. Soon, the crates were in place, and Sniper enjoyed a well-earned granola bar from the backpack before he got back to work.  
He checked on the battle through his scope. Blu team were throwing themselves at the cart as usual. Their medic was, as of a few seconds ago, decapitated. Sniper noticed their demoman hiding behind some rocks, throwing stickies at the sentry. Sniper took his time with this one, since he was obviously not paying much attention. After that shot, he scanned the battlefield again and set the rifle down without reloading it.  
He checked all the corners of the room–just in case. Then he sat out of sight of the window, untied his laces, kicked off his boots, and with a sigh of relief, stripped his pants off.  
With another guilty look around him, Mundy opened the backpack and pulled out a long skirt. It was black and white, with a floral pattern and an elastic waistband. It was the most comfortable article of clothing Mundy had ever worn.  
Mundy was an assassin, a professional, a sniper. He was not a poet. As he pulled the skirt on and sat by the window, his mind wandered back to the first time he had worn it, but he could hardly have described it. He had been surprised to realize that MannCo sold such items, and that they didn’t particularly care about knowing who had ordered one, so long as they got paid for it. The hardest thing had been justifying to himself that he wanted one. Eventually, he figured that as long as he was getting paid obscene amounts of money to murder people, it didn’t really matter what he used that money for, to feel a little better about himself in the meantime.  
But he wasn’t ready for how the first time he put it on. It took his breath away, literally. He didn’t know whether it was because it felt right, or less wrong, or even just different for once, but he couldn’t see himself in the mirror through all the emotions. It was like–the feeling was like–if he had been stuck peering through a scope all his life, and then someone pulled it off his eye, and he could finally see everything the world was, all the ways he could be. Except he actually liked living half his life through a scope, as it was confining in a comforting way, and the world was overwhelming. But with this confoundingly powerful piece of fabric, it was the opposite, and he could almost dream of what it might be like to live freely in other ways.  
Mundy didn’t like thinking too hard about it. He was not a poet. Those were all problems along the lines of “What is beauty?” that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy. He was not even an engineer: he was not put on this earth to solve problems, practical or otherwise. His preferred method was running away from them, and then ideally shooting them in the head while talking massive amounts of shit from a safe distance. That usually meant they couldn’t hear the shit he was talking. It’s the thought that counts.  
Mundy had never felt at home in his own body, or in who he was supposed to be, as an Australian or as . . . a man. Or as an Australian man. He had never grown a mustache or Australia-shaped chest hair. He never wanted to fist-fight like the other kids. He’d just hide in a tree and throw stones at them. Which thing, exactly, was he so deeply uncomfortable with pretending to be? Would he have done better as an Australian woman, or as a different kind of man? How exactly were Australianity and masculinity related?  
Mundy didn’t like thinking too hard about it. Right here, right now, he had a good job, and it let him get away with feeling better about himself in certain ways, and right here, right now, he didn’t need to think about it. That was enough for him–or so he told himself.  
Sniper was jolted back into the present by the sound of the door handle shaking. “Piss,” he whispered. How long had he been there with his head in the clouds? Had he shot anyone? It appeared he had: he was out of ammunition.  
“Fuck sake,” he growled. He grabbed his kukri, then set it back down. He started to take the skirt off, but then a blow from the outside displaced the crates and knocked the door half open. He was probably going to die here. Would it be worse for his killer to see him wearing a skirt, or to see him without pants? Sure he threw piss at them, but that was like, from a distance. None of them had caught him with his pants down before. None of them had caught him wearing very-much-not-man-pants-for-men either. Before he could decide what was worse, the door flew open all the way and the end of a flamethrower stuck through the doorway.  
Aside from the existential vertigo of getting headshot by himself, this was one of his least favorite ways to die. Sniper hyperventilated and pulled a crate in between him and the door, his kukri forgotten, as the Pyro cocked his head curiously.  
They lowered the weapon and greeted him, muffled but enthusiastic, and Sniper realized with some confusion that this was the Pyro from his team.  
“Uh, g’day,” he replied, and leaned nonchalantly against the crate in a valiant but unsuccessful effort to obscure the lower half of his body. He started to ask what Pyro was doing there, but trailed off when Pyro crouched to his knees and started looking around on the floor and under crates.  
“Leave something here?” asked Sniper. They replied in the affirmative and made a sign Sniper didn’t recognize.  
“Sorry, mate.” He shrugged. Pyro started to fingerspell something and then reached for Sniper’s backpack. He waved them on and waited. They pulled a box of matches out and lit one.  
“Matches?”  
Pyro shook his head. He shook the match out and made a motion with his thumb, like lighting a . . . Sniper put it together.  
“Lighter?”  
Pyro nodded. Sniper lowered himself to the floor, painstakingly careful with the skirt. He had accepted that Pyro had seen it, and was pleasantly surprised that they hadn’t reacted at all. But then again, it was Pyro. Who knows what they saw.  
Sniper had seen Pyro staring at the lighter plenty of times. It wasn’t anywhere on the floor. There weren’t any crevices it could be in, and the floorboards were too close together for it to have fallen through. They checked all the crates and barrels. It wasn’t on the windowsill. Sniper even looked up on top of the low rafters.  
“Anywhere else you coulda left it? I don’t think it’s here, mate.”  
Pyro seemed to have realized the same thing. He was sitting on the floor disappointed, head hung low. They shook their head, made a small, soft groan and stood up.  
Sniper had a thought. He motioned for Pyro to wait, and rummaged around in a small pocket in the backpack. He pulled out a lighter and offered it to Pyro.  
Pyro nodded and pointed at it. “No, Pyro, I’m saying you can have it,” Sniper said. “At least until you find yours.”  
Pyro stared up at him for an uncomfortably long time. Sniper wished he could tell what was going on behind the mask. Finally, he placed the lighter in Pyro’s hand and folded his fingers over it. “You can have it.”  
All of a sudden, Pyro hugged him. It was slightly awkward, and Pyro squeezed very tight. He reached around with his free arm and squeezed back, and relaxed into the embrace.  
Pyro let go, slipped the lighter into a zippered pocket, and picked up his flamethrower. “Ah, wait a minute.”  
“Hmmh?”  
“Can I, uh.” Sniper thought. “Do you mind not telling anyone about this?”  
“Mmm?” The meaning was clear from the intonation, but Pyro also signed: “Why?”  
“Uhhhh.” Sniper didn’t know how to explain. He made some incoherent sounds and gestured at his skirt, to no effect. Pyro cocked their head to their right and stared at him. Eventually they shrugged and gave a thumbs up on their way out.  
“Thanks, mate.” They left, and Sniper was alone again in the shed.


	3. Dominated! (but I treasure your friendship)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a short one this time lads lasses & gallowglasses

Sometimes, you see and hear things that way even when you ain’t scoped in. This particular day, the battle had been close, and though the team all stopped by respawn to gather their things as usual, they didn’t stick around to talk long. Mundy was a bit late getting back from the shed, and the only people left by that time were Demo and Soldier. Sniper stuffed his effects into the backpack and left a short ways behind them.

Sniper tended to blend into the background. People forgot he was there. And he spent so much of his day being alert, listening, watching–his life depended on it–that it was hard for him to switch it off. So Sniper heard most of their conversation.

“So I hear Scout’s tryin’ tae get up the nerve tae ask Miss Pauling on a date,” Demo said. “Poor boy.”

“He just needs a sensible haircut,” Soldier said. “Gals love sensible haircuts.”

Demo stared at him. “Soldier. She’s a lesbian.”

“What?!? I thought she was American!”

“Whit te feck are ye talkin aboot? Have ye no seen the way she simps for the Administrator?”

“There will be no gay agenda in my good christian Teufort!”

“Och, Soldier, have ye no seen Medic and Heavy?”

“What? They’re gay?”

“Soldier, you’re gay.”

“WHAT?”

“Soldier, we’ve been dating for twa years…”

“Noooo! What are you talking about?”

“Soldier, if ye’re no gay, what the bloody hell were ye doing in me bed last night? All night?”

“NOOOOO! I THOUGHT YOU WERE STIMULATING MY PROSTATE AS A DEAR FRIEND!”

Sniper could have gone without witnessing that. He tried, very hard, to not hear the rest of the conversation, and was only partially successful. Despite his best efforts, he thought he heard some speculation touching himself, likewise Spy, and possibly regarding himself and Spy together. It cannot be stressed enough that though Sniper took no pains to go unnoticed, and even cleared his throat a few times when he heard himself being referred to, but the two dear friends, going along arm in arm, took no notice of him.


	4. Sniper sees something unsightly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's right mates, you get one chapters for the price of two tonight  
> I promise these won't *all* be shitposts

The next day started off good. They won the first skirmish, and Sniper took an excellent position early, far up on the west flank. Thence he could terrorize the medic and harass the engineer nest very nearly from behind, and it would take the enemy a while to figure it out.

“Better hold on to your head, wanker,” Sniper muttered, bringing his crosshair to the engineer’s head. “I’m gonna blow the insides of your head . . .”

“Wait a minute. Is he . . . what the bloody hell.” Sniper took his eye off the scope, lifted up his sunglasses, and rubbed it. Was he seeing straight? He could hardly bring himself to look through the scope again.

“He’s actually jerkin’ the gerkin. He’s an actual wanker. Oh god. He’s cumming. I don’t think I can do this. My aim is too shaky at the sight of this. What can I do? If the administrator sees me purposefully not take a very easy shot, I’m done for. Fired. Left for dead.”

Sniper stared, unable to tear himself away from the trainwreck going on before his very eyes. “But he’s in such ecstasy. There will not only be jizz . . . but blood. Both at the same time. A gross sight. I can do blood. I can do jizz. But blood and jizz? Simply not.”

You can imagine that was just about the worst moment for Miss Pauling to call.

“Hey, Sniper. I’ve got a contract for you.”

“Aaaahhhhh! What the bloody hell?” he cried, dropping his rifle and sinking to the floor. He cradled his head in his hands. “Pauling! I’ll do it later. I just spotted something unsightly.”

“Unsightly? Really?”

Sniper nodded wordlessly, hysterically oblivious to the fact that she couldn’t see him.

“Sniper, you’ve killed so many people I’ve lost the records. I mean, for god’s sake, you pee in jars and throw them at people. And you spotted something unsightly? What could be so gross that it’s unsightly for you? You can tell me.”

Sniper sighed. “Well . . . I was going about my day. I reported into the RED building, waited for the Administrator to count down, and then I sat where I usually go to snipe people.”

“Yeah? Okay? Then what?”

He scratched his head and did his best to remember. “Then I . . . had to take a piss . . . I pulled out one of my jars . . .”

“No! No, Sniper, you don’t have to tell me everything, just tell me what you saw.”

Behind his sunglasses, Sniper’s eyes went blank and stared into the void just beyond the blue, cloudless New Mexico sky as he buffered, trying to process Miss Pauling’s request.

“Riiiiiiiiight. So I headshot a heavy, bodyshot two demos . . .” he gulped as he came to the point of the story. “And then I saw it.”

The words spilled out of his mouth before he could even process them. “The engineer with his wrench out–the wrench in his pants–he was erecting something fierce. And I’m not talking about a sentry. Miss Pauling?”

She was not responding.

“Miss Pauling? Are you still there?” Sniper realized that at some point, the line had gone dead. He did not blame her for hanging up.

“Damn it. I’m done for. She probably thinks I’ve gone soft. I can’t kill someone with their dick out? Maybe I have gone soft. Time to pack my bags.”

Something curious happened then. As far as Sniper could reconstruct in his memory later, after the battle, it must have gone somewhat along these lines:

The enemy spy saw Sniper preoccupied with–well, it didn’t really matter what, as long as it wasn’t watching his back. “Ohohoh! Time to backstab this amateur aimbotter!”

The spy disguised himself as Engie and snuck up for the kill. He stepped on a creaky board, and Sniper turned around ready for a fight, the fury of Hell behind his eyes. There was no way the poor spy could have known what was going on in his mind at that moment.

“Howdy, Sniper!” drawled the enemy spy, by way of alibi. “I’m definitely a friendly Engineer and definitely not a spy looking to backstab you! Yippee ki yah ki yay kayyyyy yo!”

“Agh, stay back!” growled Sniper. “You keep your pants on, you mongrel!”

“What in Sam Hill–”

“Ohhh, don’t you “what” me. I saw what the enemy engineer did. I have no reason to believe that you won’t do the same.”

“All righty then,” the dumbfounded spy replied.

“And to make sure you don’t, I’m gonna perform CBT on you. Come over here.”

And the spy screamed.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on the off chance anyone's utterly confused:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPNkB5Sm7lw


	5. Indeed, you drunken wretch

Unluckily, today was one of those rare days when Sniper never got killed. Usually that was a good thing, but today, he longed for the memory-suppressing effects of the respawn process. Sniper almost wished the poor BLU spy had backstabbed him.

Lost in the memories his brain was desperately trying to repress, Sniper walked right past Spy as he left respawn and headed to his camper. He jumped as he felt a light hand on his shoulder.

Spy had been leaning on the wall outside and was now staring into his eyes, inscrutable as usual. Sniper forgot everything for a moment.

“Would you like to come drink with me tonight?” Spy asked.

“G–wuh?” Sniper blinked. “Uhhhhhhh”

“Pardon me. I must have misunderstood when you offered me a drink yesterday,” he said, turning and marching away much quicker than necessary.

“No, wait.” Sniper looked at his feet. “Sure. I’d love to. I was just. Uh. Surprised.”

Spy raised an eyebrow and beckoned him along. They walked to the RED base in silence, mostly. They passed his camper and he thought briefly of setting his backpack inside. Everyone in the base had more or less dispersed in anticipation of the weekend. Engie was cooking something in the kitchen. Sniper shuddered as they passed by him. Demo’s room was suspiciously loud and Soldier’s suspiciously quiet. When they made it to Spy’s room, he unlocked the padlock, then the latch, then punched in the combination, then opened the door, and immediately flopped onto a luxurious velvet fainting couch.

Sniper stood a moment and took in the room. It was dimly lit by a few lamps with fancy-looking shades. The fireplace wasn’t lit. There was a dry-looking cactus on the windowsill and a coffee table in front of a comfy high-backed chair. Sniper noticed a bookshelf and a very comfortable bed before Spy spoke again.

“The wine is in the cabinet,” Spy called, still from the couch, his arm flung dramatically over his face. “Scotch if you want something stronger.”

Sniper opened the cabinet, grabbed one of the bottles of wine and a few glasses, reached for the scotch and hesitated. He didn’t really know what he was doing here. He wanted to forget today, but he didn’t know if he was desperate enough to waste his colleague’s liquor in pursuit of that goal. Had he not learned anything from his parents?

Spy would probably want whiskey too. He ended up taking a platter from the table to carry two wine glasses, two scotch tumblers, and the two bottles over to Spy. By that time, he had disposed of his suit jacket and replaced it with a vest. He patted a spot on the couch a few feet away from him, indicating where Sniper should sit.

Spy went straight for the scotch and poured two glasses. “Cheers, Bushman,” he said as he raised it to his lips. Sniper stared into his glass and took a deep breath before he drank it. He had always liked the warm sensation that came with the taste.

“What do you think?” the Frenchman asked.

“Tastes good,” Mundy replied.

“Have another.”

“You don’t usually drink, do you?”

“Nah, mate.”

The Spy took a long drink, loosened his tie, and undid the top button of his shirt. Sniper watched his neck move as he drank.

“Any particular occasion worth drinking for this fine Friday evening?”

Sniper stared at the table. “Well. I did see something unsightly.”

He didn’t elaborate, and the Frenchman didn’t press it. Sniper asked about the books on his shelf and Spy did his best to explain the novel he was currently reading to Sniper, who had been confused and frustrated by every book he had ever opened.

They had reached a short, comfortable silence when Sniper reached for the glass to refill it a fifth time and missed. His bloody hand missed. He realized, in a brief moment of clarity, that he really hated missing, and he couldn’t fucking stand not being in control. He stood up and stumbled to the window. He couldn’t see outside, which made him unaccountably angry, and he was about to hit something when he realized he was about to hit something.

Bloody hell, he thought. I’m not ready for this.

“Bushman? Mundy?” By this time, Spy had rolled up his sleeves and thrown his belt on the floor. Sniper sat back down next to him.

“Mate. I really appreciate it, but I think I shouldn’t drink any more.”

“Oh.” Even in his slightly incapacitated state, Sniper recognized the disappointment in Spy’s voice. “Well, stay until you’re sober, at least. It wouldn’t be wise to–”

“Oh, I didn’t mean . . .” Sniper searched for the right words. “I can stay, if you want. I’d like to stay. I just don’t want any more to drink.”

Spy watched him for a minute, like he was worried he would run out of the room as soon as he turned around, and then shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He poured Sniper’s glass into his own and downed it.

“You know, when y’ invited me here, I figured you were having a party or something,” Sniper said. “This is nice.”

“Non,” laughed Spy. “I usually drink alone.”

Sniper didn’t really know what to say to that. “Yeah. Relatable.”

Spy looked puzzled. “I thought you didn’t drink, Bushman.”

“Yeah.” He stared at the ceiling. “I don’t. My dad drank too much, and my mum drank too much, and so did their folks. It’s in the family, on both sides. So I stay away from it.”

Spy leaned forward and took a drink straight from the bottle.

“But there’s other things I do shut up alone that I wish I could do with other people, you know, in company, if I wasn’t so much of a . . . fucking coward.”

Sniper hadn’t meant to say most of that, especially the last part. Luckily, it seemed that Spy was tipsy enough, and lost enough in his own thoughts, that he had taken no special notice. Such was Sniper’s hope, until the Frenchman sighed deeply and responded directly to what he had said.

“Well, you’re in craven company.”

Sniper nodded, scooted closer, and put a hand on his shoulder. Spy leaned into the gesture, and Sniper ended up with his arm around him. Out of nowhere, more or less, Spy pointed out another book on his shelf and commenced an explanation of Foucault, which Sniper followed just as well as he did when he was completely sober, which is to say, very poorly.

After a little while of this, Sniper was almost sober again, he thought. Spy was quite the opposite. He was now in Sniper’s lap, curled up into his chest. He had removed his pants, and rubbed his face against Sniper’s arm so much that his mask was half off of his head. All of a sudden, Spy trailed off.

“Spy? Mate? You all right?”

He had fallen sound asleep. His breathing was slow, and Sniper matched it with his own. Sniper held him tight and matched his breathing and noticed, suddenly, that his head and eyelids were drooping in sync. He shook his head and tried to extricate himself: Spy would not be happy if he woke up with a hangover in Sniper’s lap. Spy shifted slightly so that even more of his weight was on him and held on to his shirt with a grip to rival rigor mortis. Sniper sighed. There was no way he was going to get Spy to move without waking him up. He would just have to deal with angry Spy tomorrow. But that was a problem for Future Sniper, he thought hazily as he too drifted off into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> by "angry" Sniper obviously means "tsundere"


	6. Teufort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry kids, I am not coherent enough at this point to come up with a good tf2 pun for the title

“Anything else you need at Mann Mart?”

“Non, merci. And I am quite sure.”

Mundy stuffed his hands, with the short list, in his pockets. “Right then. Uh. Guess we’ll be going.” As he poked his head discreetly out of the Frenchman’s room, he felt a hand on his arm.

“Thank you for taking him with you,” he said. “It will be a relief to have him out of the base for a few hours.”

“It’s no problem.” Mundy leaned against the doorway. “I like it when I get to spend some time with him.”

Spy snorted. “Well, that makes one of us.”

Mundy raised his eyebrows. He thought he could see something under Spy’s jocose facade, and broke eye contact before Spy became uncomfortable.

“Riiiiight. See ya later.”

Jeremy was already waiting for Mundy, leaning against the door to his camper. “Come on, let’s go!” He shifted impatiently. “How long’s it take ya to get a grocery list from Suits?”

Mundy chuckled. “You’re a bit eager to get some groceries today.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Scout said, pulling prematurely on the door handle. “We both know you’re gonna end up stopping at some coffee place or something. Open the door already, will ya?”

“Whoops. Looks like the door’s jammed, kid.” Sniper started the van. “Guess I’ll just have to go without you.”

Scout groaned. “Real funny,  _ mom _ .”

Sniper grinned and pushed the door open, and Scout hopped in. He was in a good mood from yesterday’s fight. He had done well in the area of spy-checking and tracking, and described the many ways he had bonked the enemy spy, in graphic detail, several times over on the ride into town.

“So then I knew he had to be heading for the health pack, right? So I swing where I know his head’s gotta be, and–BONK! There it is! And he flew head over heels and did a freaking cartwheel off the cliff. With his face. Cause his stupid smelly face hit the ground right at the edge. And then–oh we’re here!”

Shopping was fine, by virtue of being over with quickly. Jeremy got to push the cart, which naturally he did at double the speed that Mundy could have. Mundy picked up a new insulated oven mitt, which Mr. Conagher had requested, acquiesced to a few 12-packs of Bonk! Atomic Punch that Jeremy insisted on, made sure to get the correct latest issue of the magazine that Spy had asked for. Jeremy chatted up the cashier at the line while Mundy went through the self-checkout.

As Jeremy had rightly assumed, Mundy pulled into the parking lot of the small coffee shop and parked the van. Once again, he struck up a conversation with the kid behind the counter, or tried to, and Mundy hung back until it was his turn to order a tin of the fancy coffee Spy liked, and a cup of the same for himself.

When he joined Jeremy at the table, he was already digging into his brunch. He looked up and stared Mundy dead in the eyes. “Don’t you  _ dare _ tell Spy I ordered a croissant.”

“No worries, mate,” Mundy smiled. “I won’t tell him you got a croissant today. Or the last time. Or the time before that. Or . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get the . . .” Jeremy froze.

“Y’okay mate?” Mundy was suddenly aware of every movement he made. He took off his sunglasses and turned them around, ostensibly to inspect the lenses, actually to check behind him for threats without turning his head and betraying his worry. He breathed a sigh of relief, which was just about the opposite reaction to the confirmation of Jeremy’s suspicions.

“Yo.” He slunk down, three-fourths of his torso underneath the table, and scooted so that Mundy was in between him and . . . “Miss Pauling’s here?”

Mundy alternated between polishing and checking his sunglasses, and in this way witnessed Miss Pauling sit down at one of the tables across the small room, followed by that Bidwell kid, followed by the Administrator and Saxton Hale himself. Sniper tried not to get involved with the dealings of powerful people beyond taking their contracts, and he reflected that it might be best to make an exit after all, but saw no immediate avenue of escape, at least none that would go unnoticed.

It only got stranger from there. The next three entrances were made by the Mann twins–he would recognize those ridiculous red and blue suits anywhere–accompanied by a stranger in gray who looked like he could be their long-lost triplet or something ridiculous like that. The table quickly became crowded, so Miss Pauling and Mr. Bidwell were banished to another table, next to the corner table occupied by a pale, sour-looking man wearing a black turtleneck. He hissed at them and muttered something about his screenplay; they paid him little mind and resumed their conversation.

Jeremy was staring at that corner. Mundy nudged him under the table. “Why don’tcha go talk to her?”

“Wh-what? Why? I mean, yeah, I could, if I wanted to–”

“Do you want to?”

Jeremy shoveled the rest of his food into his mouth. A muffled “Yeah.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind talking to you.”

“Well duh! I mean, of course she wants to talk to me. Why wouldn’t she?”

Mundy nodded in agreement. Jeremy stared at the table.

“Do you know who that is?”

“The bloke?” Jeremy nodded.

“That’s Mr. Hale’s assistant. Mr. Bidwell.”

“So–so they work together?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.” He sighed, relieved. “So they’re just coworkers. Coworkers never get crushes on each other, or–start dating, or anything. That would be weird.”

“Mm,” Mundy looked awkwardly out the window. “Right.” He could be sure that these specific coworkers in this particular instance, at least, were not dating.

“You know what?” Jeremy was sitting up straighter.

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna go talk to her. I think I’m gonna ask her out.”

“Good luck, mate.”

When Jeremy left, Mundy sat with his legs crossed and conspicuously opened the magazine that he had bought for Spy. It was good he was holding it in front of his face, because the next dramatic entrance was Merasmus, and of course the bloody hag couldn’t use the door like everybody else, and now the bloody café smelled like magic.

“Welcome, my cursed companions, to this coffee café of calamity! Merasmus has summoned you here today to parley a fell matter which touches us all.”

He took his seat at the café table without comment and resumed his address. “A pernicious problem of appalling purport, for the fate of the universe . . .”

“Get on with it, you old magician,” said Mr. Hale. “I’ve wildlife to mangle.”

“A pernicious problem of appalling purport! I speak, of course . . .”

The whole table leaned in with bated breath. Merasmus continued in a hoarse whisper: “of Mike.” He paused. “ _ Mayor _ Mike.”

The Gray Mann leaned forward. “He grows ever stronger,” he whispered. “We cannot eliminate him, and before long, he will be too powerful to be contained.”

“Right on the money, mate,” shivered Saxton Hale. “One time I tried to punch him, because he said Australia wasn’t real. He just–he just said, “you can’t punch mayors,” and just like that, I realized, hot sauce! I can’t do it! I felt like a hippie! And now–oh God forgive me, and now–”

He buried his head in the Administrator’s shoulder. She patted his head. “There, there.”

“And now I just don’t know–is Australia real? Did he make it . . . Did he . . . Could he . . .”

He shrugged helplessly. Merasmus wailed mournfully. “Oh woe, woe upon us!”

The Administrator spoke up. “I have . . . made some improvements upon the systems we have in place, should he ever become a threat to any of our plans. I . . .” She sighed. “I do not know what else we can do.”

“Very well,” Merasmus concluded, after a long silence. “Moving on to other matters: Merasmus’s ex-roommate is of a similar nature and temperament, and–”

“Holy emu shit, wizard, can you shut up about that crackpot?”

The Administrator shook her head. “We have already discussed this. The patriot works for me now. He entertains me. I am not giving him to you so you can kill him.”

“Hmph.”

“If you want, you are welcome to join me and watch him blow himself and those other eight fellows sky-high, in pieces.”

“Merasmus shall not . . . hmm.” He considered. “Merasmus might take you up on that. Very well! This council is adjourned.”

He disappeared, and the others left. Bidwell and Pauling got up to go with them, leaving Jeremy at the table alone. Mundy tapped him on the shoulder. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Jeremy was quiet on the way back. Mundy ventured a question. “How’d it go?”

“What?”

“Did you ask her out?”

“What? Yeah, yeah!”

“How’d it go?”

“I mean . . . I asked her out . . .” Jeremy put his knees up. “Well, I didn’t actually ask her out.”

Mundy nodded. “Got to talk to her, though.”

“Huh?”

“Well, you like talking to her, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Were you expecting to see her in town?”

“I mean, not–no.”

“So you got to talk to her today. That’s good, right?”

“I guess so.”

“Hey.” Mundy patted his hand. “You’ll get there, Roo.”


End file.
